Perhaps it is because the dog is so hedged in by rules and regulations that he has lost his initiative. Descended from animals that lived in packs, and that enjoyed the advantages of communal intelligence, he could never have possessed this quality as it was possessed by an animal that lived alone, and had only his own acuteness and experience to rely on. But having surrendered his will to the will of man, and his conscience to the keeping of man, the dog has by now grown dependent for his simplest pleasures upon man’s caprice. He loves to roam; but whereas the cat does roam at will, rightly rejecting all interference with her liberty, the dog craves permission to accompany his master on a stroll, and, being refused, slinks sadly back to confinement and inaction. I have great respect for those exceptional dogs that take their exercise when they need or desire it in self-sufficing solitude. I once knew an Irish terrier that had this independent turn of mind. He invited himself to daily constitutionals, and might have been seen any morning trotting along the road, miles away from home, with the air of an animal walking to keep his flesh down. In the end he was run over by a speeding motor, but what of that? Die we must, and, while he lived, he was free. A lordliness of sentiment mars much of the admirable poetry written about dogs. The poet thrones himself before addressing his devoted and credulous ally. Even Matthew Arnold’s lines to “Kaiser Dead”--among the best of their kind--are heavy with patronage: “But all those virtues which commend The humbler sort who serve and tend, Were thine in store, thou faithful friend.” To be sure, Kaiser was a mongrel; but why emphasize his low estate? As a matter of fact, mongrels, like self-made men, are apt to have a peculiar complacency of demeanour. They do not rank themselves among “the humbler sort”; but “serve and tend” on the same conditions as their betters.